Can you recall a teacher shouting “Pay attention!” ?

Whether it was gazing out the window or staring at her with a blank look, our minds had wandered off, out of the classroom, even though our bodies were still physically present. Amazingly, we were sometimes able to protest that we
were paying attention and proved it by repeating every word that was just said. The reality was however, that we had only picked up the literal words and had  no idea of the meaning of the discussion that had just taken place. 

Through neuroscience we are now learning a lot more about how our brains work and what attention really means. Our brains can only really pay conscious attention to one thing at a time. For less complex tasks,
we are able to create the illusion of multitasking by switching very fast between activities. For example, spoken sentences have lots of gaps, and our minds can process information in milliseconds. We are thus able to check
our emails and write down a grocery list and still piece together the words that are spoken in a sentence. 

 Effective communication, however, requires us to interpret the words for meaning and this is an incredibly complex task, subject to all sorts of distortions. 

Good listening is an active task that requires us to pay attention. 

In the workplace, our day usually consists of a mixture of routine, and fairly menial work balanced by activities that require deep, intellectual thinking.  In the usual open plan offices, with our electronic always-on communications devices
surrounding us,  it is often literally impossible to pay attention to the task at hand. When we need to think properly, or communicate properly, we have no choice but to go somewhere where we cannot be interrupted and leave our smart phones behind.

Peter Bregman, in the Harvard Business  Review, quotes a story about a colleague, Paul, who got the perfect job but
was threatening to quit. When asked why, he said, “It’s my boss – the CEO/founder. He’s all over the place, shifting from one vision to the next. He’s unfocused, unclear, unrealistic, and, most disturbingly, he’s burning bridges with potential investors as well as colleagues. He even reneged on a commitment  he made to me, which I had already extended to other people. He’s hurting the business and I’m worried about my reputation by affiliation.”

When running my management seminars, I get this same common objection: “It’s not me, that’s the main problem, it’s my boss”.

This issue is so common issue that I am actually developing a seminar called “Managing Upwards” that I  will be running in the second half of 2014. 
 
In Peter’s blog, he talks about the  courage to confront the issue, rather than walking away. Clear, direct communication is key! Generally the problem stems from each party looking at the same facts from two different perspectives. Many assumptions are made on both sides, often without anyone confronting the real issue. In my coaching role, when I talk to bosses, they complain that their issues are not being prioritized -  yet seldom do bosses get to the bottom of why this is so. Unless there is a genuine performance issue, the probability is  that the team member genuinely believes that what they are working on, is a higher priority, and that they are working for the good of the business, rather than their boss. In this management era where empowerment is encouraged, clarifying why something is important, is the best way to get true commitment to the requested deliverable. But bosses are human, and don’t always get it right. Where we may have misaligned priorities or feel that the bosses behaviours or demands are impeding progress for the business, we should have the courage to confront the issue, respectfully and openly.

Actively managing your boss and talking openly will at least bring the issues out into the open, and highlight the assumptions made by each party. It is only in extreme cases, that the alignment of purpose is structurally misaligned, in which case its better for both parties to depart company. 

In case you are wondering, the case mentioned in the opening section of this blog had a positive outcome after Paul had an open and frank conversation with the CEO…

The Managing Upwards seminar will be run at Wisconsin University (Madison, US) in November 2014.

Trevor Manning

Many of us struggle with balancing all the work and home pressures of modern life. We have so much to do, just to get on top of our job at work, in addition to home and family pressures. If that’s not enough, we also have aspirational goals of getting fit, learning a musical instrument or investing in our further education. When the boss at work calls us in for a brain storming session to come up with ideas to do even more, we may well feel we are at breaking point, and want to throw in the towel.

The reality is that in the current work era, we have two roles: a worker role, and a manager role. In our manager role we need to develop a plan to prioritise all these seemingly conflicting priorities. We may blame our senior management at work, yet it is not their role to get us organised and schedule our time – that’s ours alone!

Develop a habit of starting your day, with a plan that prioritises and schedules the most urgent and most important things, as though it was going to be done by someone else. In your 24 hours, balance work goals, home goals, personal goals as well as long term versus short. Then you can switch hats to worker mode and execute the plan that your manager-self created.

Trevor Manning

I am often amazed by how blind we are to our own faults especially when we are busy criticising others.  I recently ran a leadership seminar for an international company and during one of the sessions the more senior people in the room started explaining how their bosses on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean were the real problem. 

By the senior leaders kicking off the discussion this gave permission for others to wade in and enthusiastically criticise the executives in the company for all their woes.   They explained how the behaviour of these executives made it very difficult for them to motivate their own teams.  What they had failed to notice was how their own behaviour was having a negative impact on the less senior people in the room.  Watching their own leaders admit that nothing would get better with the current executive leadership in place - something which clearly was not about to change - was very demotivating for them, and it was clear from their body language that they blamed their bosses sitting in front of them, rather than the more senior ones 10,000 miles away. 

As leaders, we should focus on the things we can change, rather than the things we can't.  

What we can change is staring right back at us, when we look in the mirror. So shine your mirror and improve your leadership.